The Beauty of the West Highland Seaboard--Dr. Aiton of
Dolphinton--Dr. Norman Macleod--Specimen of Turtle-Dove (Columba
Turtur) shot in Ardgour--The belief on the Continent of its
value as a Household Pet--Bechstein--Male Birds dropping Eggs
in confinement.
If somewhat over-showery for the comfort of tourists, whose season
[June 1871] may now be said to have fairly commenced, the weather
with us on the west coast is at least all that the agriculturist and
sheepowner could wish it to be, for pasture everywhere is rich and
abundant to a degree that has rarely been known even here, while crops
of all kinds never perhaps presented a healthier or more luxuriant
growth. The truth is that a certain amount of rainfall, and that
amount a large one, is absolutely necessary for the wellbeing of our
crops in the West Highlands, and the longer we live the more do we
feel the truth and force of the saying of a shrewd old gentleman,
at his own dinner table many years ago, to the effect that he had
always observed that the season in which there was some difficulty
in getting peats secured in good condition was invariably the best
for Lochaber and the neighbouring districts from a pastoral and
agricultural point of view. This is particularly observable this
year, for while you cannot as yet see a stack of this season's peats
anywhere, the country is clothed in richer, greener verdure, the woods
are leaner, and crops of every description more luxuriant than we can
recollect to have been the case for at least a dozen years past. If
anybody wishes to see the West Highlands in all their magnificence and
beauty, now is the season, for, go where you may, turn whithersoever
you will, wander forth at any hour and in any direction, you cannot
fail to be charmed with the infinite variety of pictures that present
themselves for your admiration, pictures which, while they only charm
and enchant the ordinary beholder, delight at once and distress the
artist--delight him by their marvellous beauties, but distress him
not the less, because he cannot with all his cunning transfer these
beauties in their entirety to canvas. An American gentleman whom we
met the other day candidly confessed that, although he had gone over
most of his native land, and made the tour of Continental Europe and
the East, he had not in all his travels seen anything more beautiful
than the shores of Loch Linnhe, Loch Leven, and Lochiel at sunset on
a fine evening in June. The late Dr. Aiton of Dolphinton told us on
his return from Palestine that he had seen nothing at all to equal
Loch Linnhe on a summer's evening. In all the breadth of his native
Doric, which he always employed in familiar conversation, he declared
there was "naething in a' the Archipelago till touch't," and we have
heard Dr. Norman Macleod on his return from India express himself
very much to the same effect. The Queen says in her Journal that
"the scenery in Loch Linnhe is magnificent--such beautiful mountains."
A specimen of a very rare bird, shot by the keeper in Ardgour Garden
a few days ago, has been kindly sent to us by Mr. Maclean. It turns
out to be a male in beautiful plumage of the turtle-dove (Columba
turtur, Linn.; La tourterelle of Buffon), a bird rarely seen anywhere
in Scotland, and which, except in this instance, has never, so far as
we are aware, been met with in the West Highlands. We remember seeing
a young bird, a female in immature plumage, that was said to have been
shot somewhere near Falkland Palace in the summer of 1847, from which
it was reasonably concluded that a pair of these beautiful birds had
in that year at least nidified and reared their young somewhere in
the Howe of Fife. Except in the case of the specimen now before us,
we are not aware that it has ever been met with anywhere in the
north or north-western counties. The turtle is, as we have said,
an exceedingly beautiful and handsome bird, the breast of a delicate
vinaceous tint, and a black patch on either side of the neck, each
feather of which is tipped with a crescent of pure white, giving it a
very elegant and striking appearance. It is less bulky and less rotund
in form than the common dove, its shape more nearly resembling that
of the blue jay or throstle cock, which latter it also about equals
in size. We have never seen this bird in confinement, but it is said
to exhibit a remarkable degree of tenderness and sagacity, whether
as a cage or chamber bird. On the Continent it is kept not only for
its tameness and beauty, but because it is a common belief among the
people that it attracts to itself bad humours, and is to a family
in the matter of diseases what a lightning-rod is to a building in a
thunderstorm. Bechstein, a shrewd and intelligent man, seems to think
that the belief in question, absurd as it may appear to us, is not
so ill-founded after all, for he says quietly, "Thus much at least is
certain, that during the illness of men it readily becomes sickly." The
explanation probably is that, being a tender and delicate bird, the
odour and effluvia attendant on certain human ailments affects it as
described. Other birds are occasionally similarly affected; thus, when
our own children were laid up with a very bad kind of scarlatina, our
cage-birds, gold and green finches, were out of sorts for some time,
drooping and dejected and unable to sing as usual, though the month
was April, when they should have been in all respects at their best
and in full and free song. You may be sure, by the way, that we were
not a little pleased with a paragraph which appeared the other day
about the male cockatoo that dropped the egg, very much, no doubt,
to the astonishment of his amiable mistress. When some years ago we
ventured to assert that males of various birds, notably the common
domestic cock, sometimes dropped an egg, the thing was scouted as
ridiculous, and from Dan to Beersheba, from London to John O'Groat's,
the cry was that it couldn't be, that it was impossible; one writer
going so far in his scepticism as plainly to declare that "he would
as soon believe that a bull had given birth to a calf." Much was the
chaffing that we had to endure in connection with the subject, and
our most intimate friends could hardly believe that we were serious
in it at all. And yet we were perfectly in earnest; we had known the
thing happen repeatedly, and since then a very fine cock goldfinch
of our own, one of the best singers, too, we have ever heard, laid an
egg in his cage which is still in our possession, and several of our
correspondents having had their attention directed to the subject,
have assured themselves that, not only is the thing possible, but
in the case of the domestic cock at least, and of many cage-birds,
of rather common occurrence. It is a very odd and curious thing,
no doubt, and difficult of explanation, but there are thousands
of undisputed facts in natural history in the same category, the
existence of which is beyond all question, though the how, and why,
and wherefore is a mystery.
From our window, as we write these lines, we can see quite a fleet
of herring boats sailing up Loch Linnhe on their return from the
fishing stations at Barra, Lochmaddy, and the Lewis--a very pretty
sight--not less than two hundred or more boats under full sail,
stretching in one long line from Corran Ferry to the Sound of Mull,
looking at this distance for all the world like the notes in a line
of complicated printed music.